It's just over a fortnight since Theresa May gave an "at home" interview to the Sunday Times, telling the paper about her childhood and explaining how Brexit keeps her awake at night. But it was her choice of trousers - which cost a reported £995 - that provoked most discussion.

"I don't have leather trousers. I don't think I've ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress," former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan told The Times, adding that the trousers had been "noticed and discussed" in Tory circles.

She added: "My barometer is always: 'How am I going to explain this in Loughborough market?"'

It was at this point that the story really took off, with another Conservative backbench MP, Nadine Dorries, taking Mrs Morgan to task.

"I think it shows Nicky Morgan's comments were sexist, because she never criticised David Cameron's extremely expensive suits," she told the Daily Mail.

After Ms Hill texted ex-Conservative minister Alistair Burt, who had also been invited to the meeting at Downing Street, to tell him "don't bring that woman to No 10 again", Mrs Morgan found out about the message, the paper reported.

"If you don't like something I have said or done, please tell me directly. No man brings me to any meeting," she wrote to Ms Hill.

"Your team invites me. If you don't want my views in future meetings you need to tell them."

Yet, for someone with an image built on strength and what passes in political circles for sanity, the Prime Minister does seem alarmingly determined to undermine her own brand.

Paranoia is a natural state of mind for leaders facing their political death. When a fading PMs detect plots everywhere, that’s because every cabinet piranha scents their blood.

It’s when a strong leader is inexplicably insecure that you worry. May is already being compared to Richard Nixon, who was highly popular and guaranteed a second term when he suicidally overegged the re-election pudding with Watergate.

Admittedly, Boris Johnson’s remarks about the Saudis offended against diplomatic etiquette by being the plain truth (and God love you, Boris, for that). But as the coach who hired him, May’s regular acidic critiques of her star striker reflect much more, and much worse, on her judgment than on his.

May overreacted violently by unleashing Fiona Hill, her joint chief of staff and chief attack dog. Hill texted Alastair Burt, another Remain stalwart who accompanied Morgan to a previous No 10 meeting about Brexit: “Don’t bring that woman to Downing Street again.”

On hearing this, “that woman” (yeucch; who talks like that?) messaged Hill: “No man brings me to any meeting.” Hill responded: “Well he just did. So there!” Of course one admires the delicate wit of “so there!”, even if “nurgh nurgh nurgh nuurrrrrgggghhhh nurgh!!!” might have had the more dazzling Wildean thrust.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the proceedings of Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the Channel Islands, Northern Ireland and a few other places. Take a moment to admire the decorum and maturity, please. After all, they're paid six times what a front-line soldier makes, right?

Please offer a rigorous definition of 'scientific progress' that has a clear metric that can be measured.

elasto wrote:My point about the scientific method is that advances stack upon each other in a way they don't in a non-scientific environment - eg. a religious one where science is oppressed. In that environment, knowledge can go backwards as easily as forwards (eg. the Dark Ages), and advances are as much through luck as judgment.

I can offer a more evidence than you would believe that Judaism places a huge emphasis on education, and the religious precepts of Islam directly lead to Islamic society being very intellectually advanced, so maybe you should think twice before throwing one of the defining characteristics of every civilization under the bus because of what happened with some aspects of one religion during a very small part of human history.

CorruptUser wrote:(yes I realize it's a eugenics argument; what of it?)

Eugenics was one of the founding principles of Nazi ideology, is fundamentally racist, has been used to justify genocide and force sterilization (see first point), and has been conclusively disproved.

Whenever I see an article like this I play a little game with myself. "We [Americas] are in the middle of a war, on the brink of another, recovering from the worst financial crisis in decades, trillions in debt, overrun by corruption on Wall St., cannot pass a budget, have an unstable population dynamic, in an ecological nightmare, minorities are being kills by racist cops, innocent cops are being attacked, school shootings are commonplace, violence and sexuality are exploited for profit constantly, bigotry of all types is on the rise, and [insert topic of article]. What do you want to talk about first?" It really help put everything in perspective and makes a nice response to someone who is upset by something like this.

"You are not running off with Cow-Skull Man Dracula Skeletor!" -Socrates

Yeah, that sounds notable. A *lot* of progress isn't some stellar breakthrough, but just some incremental gain. That's pretty typical.

That said, to get back to the original point, that doesn't demonstrate that scientific progress is linear. I'd wager that while measuring technology overall is difficult, specific fields have kind of an S curve, with a nice period of steep gains, followed by diminishing returns as the maximum available due to physics/current state of other tech is reached.

Tyndmyr wrote:Yeah, that sounds notable. A *lot* of progress isn't some stellar breakthrough, but just some incremental gain. That's pretty typical.

That said, to get back to the original point, that doesn't demonstrate that scientific progress is linear. I'd wager that while measuring technology overall is difficult, specific fields have kind of an S curve, with a nice period of steep gains, followed by diminishing returns as the maximum available due to physics/current state of other tech is reached.

This is the problem with scientific advances. There's all this expectation of exponential growth....except nobody has contingency plans for when the top part of the S-curve happens.

Yeah. Happens routinely in other areas, too. Growth curves may be nicely exponential in a textbook or whatever, but eventually you start to approach hard limits that can be supported, and growth slows. May even reverse if it overshoots carrying capacity or what not.

The idea of an exponential trend that continues indefinitely shows up in media over and over again, often with ludicrously hopeful/panicked claims, but they very rarely turn out to matter. And usually, nobody addresses the unspoken expectation of why we should expect a trend to continue indefinitely.

jewish_scientist wrote:Please offer a rigorous definition of 'scientific progress' that has a clear metric that can be measured.

No, because you're being overly literal. My point is simply that progress is built upon prior progress, and that advances in complementary technologies do not add but multiply.

As others have said, it's obviously true that growth within an individual tech follows an S-shaped curve. Fortunately new techs keep getting invented all the time. The big three I see for this century are nanotech, gene-editing and AI, each of which is barely in its infancy, and each of which has the capacity to literally change the world beyond imagining within decades, let alone all three in combination.

jewish_scientist wrote:I can offer a more evidence than you would believe that Judaism places a huge emphasis on education, and the religious precepts of Islam directly lead to Islamic society being very intellectually advanced, so maybe you should think twice before throwing one of the defining characteristics of every civilization under the bus because of what happened with some aspects of one religion during a very small part of human history.

Then you are agreeing with my point that when the leaders in society value scientific principles, society advances more quickly than when they do not. Scientific principles existed prior to the scientific revolution you know...

Remember, the entirety of my point was that I despair that leaders like Trump and May ignore science in favour of personal ideology, and I then made a throwaway point about what massive leaps forward we've taken post the scientific revolution. And some are taking that to mean I think we didn't make significant breakthroughs prior to the scientific revolution or that breakthroughs are something unique to the West (or, even more bizarrely, Christianity), which couldn't be further from my mind.

So let's just chalk it all up to a misunderstanding and let it drop, mmmkay?

Whenever I see an article like this I play a little game with myself. "We [Americas] are in the middle of a war, on the brink of another, recovering from the worst financial crisis in decades, trillions in debt, overrun by corruption on Wall St., cannot pass a budget, have an unstable population dynamic, in an ecological nightmare, minorities are being kills by racist cops, innocent cops are being attacked, school shootings are commonplace, violence and sexuality are exploited for profit constantly, bigotry of all types is on the rise, and [insert topic of article]. What do you want to talk about first?" It really help put everything in perspective and makes a nice response to someone who is upset by something like this.

Right back at ya: We've screwed up the climate so badly we're managing to have water shortages and floods at the same time, malaria's showing up Resistant To Everything like MRSA but mosquito-borne, our involvement in the Middle East has killed a million civilians and made millions more homeless, our inaction on the Syria-Hungary part of the refugee route has made us look weak and/or callous, national papers are playing to racist stereotypes, the fossil fuel companies somehow got anti-fracking protesters listed as dangerous extremists posing a major security threat, the memo banning leaks about Brexit got leaked, our economic forecasts are based on fantasies and pipe-dreams, Putin's pulled a Sudetenland in Ukraine, Yemen's gone to hell, Syria's gone to hell, Turkey's going to hell, Iraq's still in hell, Libya's so starved and wound that a monkey pulling off a headscarf started a local war with tanks and mortars involved, Egypt's not recovered, food bank dependency keeps setting record highs, Winter Is Coming, we're still seeing two women a week murdered by current or former partners, racist and homophobic groups are gaining power in many countries, newspaper reports of "child abuse on a massive scale" have to specify which ongoing investigation's total lack of progress they're updating and people in the top tiers of our national government are arguing about WHAT?!?

Fuck Theresa Mays pants. The only meaning to be found there is that people love to gossip, and be judgemental. Nothing new in that.

If you can't answer the question of how to define science, you can tell how many people you need to have a society that can support all those fine toys. Which to me would indicate that the process is population limited. Dump the encyclopedia of all human knowledge into imperial Rome and they could drool about dinner on the 100 floor of a shiny new high rise all they want, but they couldn't build it, there weren't enough Romans. And if it were written on paper it's possible that they couldn't preserve it fast enough to keep from losing it.

Populists themselves aren't new. And science has been under attack for one reason or another since there have been people. Trump himself doesn't hate all science, Trump hates science which is inconvenient for him.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

If the patent on sildenafil (Viagra) is about to run out, just because Pfizer offers Viagra Extra, sildenafil with traces of tiger bone for extra ferocious stiffening power, doesn't mean that Merck Medco can't mass produce generic sildenafil.

I've made 26 patents on a blood pressure pill. Each one improves results by 1%and extends My patent another 10 years. What have I actually accomplished other than enriching myself?

Your latest one is 26% better than your first one?

After 260 years I'd like to hope it's 26% better. Certainly the price is "better", having gone up 7,565% in that time.

That assumes the patent is only extended at the end of the current patent, which isn't what most companies do, tbh. Mostly the use the marginal increase in efficacy to increase the price (so, agreeing with you, just not the timeframe).

"Does this smell like chloroform to you?""Google tells me you are not unique. You are, however, wrong."nɒʜƚɒɿ_nɒɿɘ

CorruptUser wrote:Wouldn't the patent run out on the original drug though?

If the patent on sildenafil (Viagra) is about to run out, just because Pfizer offers Viagra Extra, sildenafil with traces of tiger bone for extra ferocious stiffening power, doesn't mean that Merck Medco can't mass produce generic sildenafil.

That's why you have a constant ad campaign for the newest purple/blue/pink/yellow/polka-dot pill.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

CorruptUser wrote:...Except those patent extensions are on the alternate formulations or new uses of the drugs, not the original drug itself.

The act of extending the patent to the new formulation or use protects the original drug patent, again by extending the patent. The exercise would be meaningless( or at least a lot less useful) if it didn't do what I'm describing, then why go through the extra trials? Yes it's really cheesy and kinda pointless, but it does serve a purpose, albeit twisted. I'm looking for a clear explanation of the drug patent laws, but this shit is arcane. In either case, patent extensions do delay generics from coming onto the market. While I can't find a citation that says I'm right, you can clearly tell there's money to be made by extending patents.

That certainly beats the Independent's recent captions, "afjkgha;jsdfhjklhakjghasjkdfhafhj;shjklhas" and "These are just some sample words to use in the test run so you can see how many characters will fit in the caption space."

CorruptUser wrote:...Except those patent extensions are on the alternate formulations or new uses of the drugs, not the original drug itself.

The act of extending the patent to the new formulation or use protects the original drug patent, again by extending the patent. The exercise would be meaningless( or at least a lot less useful) if it didn't do what I'm describing, then why go through the extra trials? Yes it's really cheesy and kinda pointless, but it does serve a purpose, albeit twisted. I'm looking for a clear explanation of the drug patent laws, but this shit is arcane. In either case, patent extensions do delay generics from coming onto the market. While I can't find a citation that says I'm right, you can clearly tell there's money to be made by extending patents.

Well yes there's money to be made. You patent Acetaminophen, then when that runs out you patent a 50/50 solution of Acetaminophen and Acetylsalicylic Acid, and when that runs out you patent Acetaminophen in nasal drop form. This causes a "new" drug to be on the market, but the original formulation is still generic.

Like what Morris said; apples and apple pies. The "new" pies are patented, but apples are not.

Don't believe me? Sildenafil, which may very have been the world's third most profitable drug (after Sofosbuvir and Ledipasvir; fuck Gilead Sciences you greedy fucking bastards), is now generic. If Pfizer could've delayed the end of their patent indefinitely, don't you think THAT would be the drug they would've been protecting?

Lilly had an active patent on antipsychotic Zyprexa, a name you might remember from above, while its patent on anti-depressant Prozac had expired. In a move that would extend the patent on Zyprexa and keep Prozac profitable, despite the emergence of a generic, Lilly developed and patented a new drug that was a combination of both, called Symbyax, one of very few drugs FDA-approved for treating bipolar depression—and they've got patent protection on that specific combination of drugs locked up until 2017.

Migraine treatment drug Imitrex (sumatriptan) made over $1 billion in annual sales for GlaxoSmithKline, and thus the company was mightily motivated to hold on to the patent, set to expire in 2006. To do so they developed an intranasal spray, which received FDA approval, and let them keep hold of the drug--and profits--for 5 more years.

CorruptUser wrote:Wouldn't the patent run out on the original drug though?

If the patent on sildenafil (Viagra) is about to run out, just because Pfizer offers Viagra Extra, sildenafil with traces of tiger bone for extra ferocious stiffening power, doesn't mean that Merck Medco can't mass produce generic sildenafil.

Essentially, yes.

It doesn't lock all competition out of the market, they merely have the advantage of branding, as well as whatever new increase they produced. Now, that can be significant, but it's not really wrong, and doesn't prevent the mere existence of generics. It might discourage them, depending on market size, etc, but it certainly doesn't legally lock them out wholly.

That eclipse and another one in April 2024 both pass very close to a town near where I grew up (Carbondale, IL). The local university has an astronomy club that I'm sure will have a field day with both.

CorruptUser wrote:Those giants he stood on? They were a giant mountain of people standing on the person below's shoulders.

Oh and Elasto, the "religion holds back society" trope is a bit overused. The Church actually provided a means for intelligent people to dedicate their lives to study, and did preserve a lot of knowledge through the dark ages. Gregory Mendel made his discoveries in a monastery, and Newton was a Jesuit. The bigger problem was that it forced the people studying to be celibate (yes I realize it's a eugenics argument; what of it?).

It's the morals that stall science. But you yourself are guilty of that. Oh sure, you might support stem cell research or animal testing, but do you also support research on the mentally ill? Because that was critical in the late 19th century for understanding disease. And that's not getting into the works of Harlow, an important series of experiments that involved raping monkeys.

The bigger problem was that it forced the people studying to be celibate (yes I realize it's a eugenics argument; what of it?).

Not to re-open your can of worms...But, The Church requiring celibacy was protective.

It protected against having Blood Related Children that would put the Nun or Priest at emotional risk.Celibacy protected against STD's. That was a Big Damn Deal before the dawn of blue green mould.

Celibacy was...Protective. Have I miss-understood your point?

Life is, just, an exchange of electrons; It is up to us to give it meaning.

We are all in The Gutter.Some of us see The Gutter.Some of us see The Stars.by mr. Oscar Wilde.

Those that want to Know; Know.Those that do not Know; Don't tell them.They do terrible things to people that Tell Them.